In recent years, computer-assisted surgery using medical navigation systems (also referred to as surgical navigation systems) has become widely popular. Computer-assisted surgery increases the efficiency and accuracy of surgical interventions and enables an operation to be documented by detecting and tracking the positions of body structures and medical instruments and by deriving information for the surgeon from these data.
In order to enable a medical instrument or a body structure to be handled by the medical navigation system, it is necessary to provide the instrument or structure with a marker device which can be detected by the medical navigation system. For a body structure in particular, this means that the marker device must be rigidly affixed to the structure. This often causes additional damage to the body structure, the negative effects of which have to be traded off against the benefits of faster, more efficient or more accurate surgery. If the body structure is for example a bone, the marker device is usually affixed to the bone using a pin, a bolt or a Schanz screw, thus resulting in an additional hole imposed on the bone.